August 22, 2006

I'll admit, when it comes to using the web I'm picky. But honestly with so many solutions for each problem out there that isn't necessarily a bad thing. One of the areas I'm most picky is my online mail account. I'm currently a GMail fanatic. I love the layout (actually it's more of the lack of banner ads that I get all warm and fuzzy about), clean and simple. I've had a Yahoo! account since I was in highschool (I graduated in '99 if you're keeping score). I actually used it for a while, even into my freshman year of college. I originally used Hotmail, but it didn't keep me (I can't even remember my address with them).

I still use my Yahoo! account for junk, you know, things that require email confirmation and you just know they're giving out your email to their marketing departments. Yahoo! has always been too cluttered for me though. The majority of the pages you see are ads, and not just text ads, banners and flash movies are all the rave with Yahoo!. Which brings me to a side point. Everyone is marketing to someone. Yahoo! just happens to be marketing to a young audience that loves the flashy movies and the 'meet your perfect mate' opportunities that Yahoo! offers.

One thing about Yahoo! mail that is a nice change (although they still haven't gotten rid of the banners) is thier new beta (does that word even mean anything on the web anymore?) mail interface. It's all ajaxified and desktop-app-like. But again, it isn't marketing to me. For instance, if you've used the new Yahoo! Mail Beta you may have noticed this little bouncing guy when waiting for your mail to load:

Now don't get me wrong, I'm a sucker for an animated Gif (I pronounce it with a 'g' like good unless I don't) just like the next person. But really, what does this little guy (they call him Liam in the file name) have to do with checking my email? Not a freakin' thing. This is just another example that they are marketing to the kiddies. A young audience is all about little images moving on the screen, it stimulates their young minds I guess. But for me, it's just annoying. I want functionality, even above aesthetics.

August 17, 2006

As if they couldn’t find something better to do. Now someone is out there trying to rid us of the accursed caps lock key. They are coming to our rescue, but do we need rescuing?Is it time to permanently retire the Caps Lock key? Pieter Hintjens thinks so.

http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,71606-0.html?tw=rss.index - Hintjens, the CEO of iMatix, has launched the Capsoff organization in a campaign urging hardware manufacturers to ditch the oft-abused and misused key. Hintjens' plan is to build the entire infrastructure for the movement using only freely available tools from Google. He's already set up a Blogger Capsoff blog and a forum at Google Groups."The Caps key is an abomination," Hintjens writes on his blog. "It's a huge key, stuck right there where the Ctrl used to be, and as far as I know, it's only used by 419 scammers and Fortran programmers."Zealous net newbies have also subjected the Caps Lock key to overuse, composing e-mails and newsgroup posts entirely in capital letters, an ugly and inelegant style of communication akin to screaming. In fact, the Capsoff organization's slogan is "STOP SHOUTING!"

August 14, 2006

This is why they wore 2 sets of dog tags in Vietnam, one around the neck and another on your foot. If your head got lost your foot would identify you. On a tech note, this may end up being a footnote for an RFID case.

August 10, 2006

The great PC 'what-if' CNET News.com: "In 1981, IBM executives made either a brilliant or a boneheaded decision: They allowed a little company providing the operating system for their new PC to sell that software to other companies. "